Polar Peek a Boo Custom Quilting

I received this quilt top in the mail from one of my long-term customers Monette from Kamloops, BC.  She requested that I custom quilt it and gave me free rein to do what I wanted.  Sometimes it's awesome to just go to town on some designs that have been percolating in my head for quite some time.  The video is a little longer, let me know what you think in the comments on YouTube!

Polar Peek a Boo YouTube Video

I did already have quite a few designs in mind for the background, so I decided to jump straight to the hard part, the bears.

To tell you the truth I was reasonably happy with all three of these designs but decided that it would ultimately be best if I just went for the more simple design so as not to overwhelm all of the nice paper piecing. 

I did mark out some really large swirls and snowflakes using my chalk mechanical marking pencil and a couple of lines to help me keep the bear faces symmetrical. 

I knew I would be turning this quilt right from the beginning as I had designed the background swirls to travel vertically with the quilt top and the bears 'fur' was also going to be quite linear vertically, but the space below the bears I wanted to do something different and make it look like the bears weren't just floating. 

So as I was quilting I basted along the whole side in preparation for turning. 

Here is a photo of some of the progress I made on the sky area background with the swirls and snowflakes. 

Monette likes fairly dense quilting on her quilts so I did a pebble-style filler around the swirls. 

As for the bears I had this wavey design in my mind with some 'C' lines quilted into some of the echos. What do you think about this design?  I thought it was pretty excellent and it sure gave the mama bear a lot of texture. 

As I approached the center of the quilt I forgot to film adding in the little paw prints.  I just made some templates and drew them on with a chalk pencil.  I like how they get smaller, I think it gives the quilt some extra depth. 

I didn't add the little 'C' shapes to the cub's fur as I wanted them to look a little different. 

And finally, I decided to do a little bit more of an organic design on the ground area, as it looked a little too out of place with the sky.

There were a ton of details on this quilt and it was a blast to design and quilt.  The YouTube video is a little longer this time around, and reasonably so to get all the details.  I have decided to only post once every two weeks during summer as it's so busy, and there are only so many beautiful days to enjoy. 

Let's Go Stitch!